Fantasy Football Outlook: Audric Estime, Javon Baker, Jaleel McLaughlin, Ja’Lynn Polk

NFL training camps have opened, and the heart of fantasy football draft season is just ahead. FantasyPros analysts Derek Brown, Andrew Erickson, Pat Fitzmaurice and Mike Maher begin a series of preseason roundtables by discussing the most compelling training camp battles, rookies with uncertain 2024 outlooks, play-callers in new places and more. Here is this week’s full fantasy football roundtable. Below we dive into a few notable fantasy football players and their outlook for 2024.

Fantasy Football Roundtable

Which training camp battle do you find most compelling? Pick a team and a position group. What are the stakes for fantasy?

Patriots WRs

Derek Brown: The Patriots’ receiving depth chart is one of the most interesting units to discuss. Each of these players is dirt cheap in drafts and the sentiment around this group, per average draft position (ADP) data/expert consensus rankings (ECR), is that they are all afterthoughts in fantasy this season. Someone (or multiple players) will emerge from this depth chart as a wonderful value this season.

Ja’Lynn Polk has been discussed as a possible leader of the group, with his second-round draft capital doing much of the heavy lifting for his hope. Kendrick Bourne is the grizzled, productive veteran who ranked 36th in yards per route run and first-read share and 22nd in targets per route run last year, per Fantasy Points Data. Javon Baker, one of my draft-season crushes, ranked eighth in yards per route run and 24th in receiving grade in his final collegiate season, per Pro Football Focus (PFF). DeMario Douglas was the unquestioned WR1 for the team last year once he was a starter with a 20.8% target share and 24.4% first-read share.

If Drake Maye is the player many hope he is, or if Jacoby Brissett can be this year’s Geno Smith, some of these New England wide receivers will massively outperform where they are being drafted.

Broncos RBs

Pat Fitzmaurice: We’ve heard reports Jaleel McLaughlin and Audric Estime are locks for Denver’s RB rotation and that Javonte Williams and Samaje Perine are dueling for a single roster spot. Undrafted free agent Blake Watson might also be in the running for RB snaps. It’s a messy situation, but there are two reasons it’s a position battle worth following.

First, Sean Payton’s offenses in New Orleans routinely produced two or more fantasy-relevant RBs (Reggie Bush/Deuce McAllister … Pierre Thomas/Mark Ingram/Darren Sproles … Ingram/Alvin Kamara).

Second, the Denver backfield could be a reception factory. The Broncos led the NFL in RB targets last year with 153. The Jets were the only other team with more than 131 targets. Since 2011, Payton’s teams have accounted for eight of the 20 highest RB target shares in the league. (Hat tip to JJ Zachariason for that stat.) Rookie QB Bo Nix was a checkdown machine in college. One or two of these RBs are going to catch a boatload of passes this year.

NFL Ja’Lynn Polk Kendrick Bourne Javon Baker DeMario Douglas Drake Maye Jacoby Brissett Geno Smith Jaleel McLaughlin Audric Estime Javonte Williams Samaje Perine Blake Watson Alvin Kamara Bo Nix